


the borders

by yerimoney



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe, Domestic Violence, Friendship, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:41:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26362831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yerimoney/pseuds/yerimoney
Summary: heard you glassed a boy back in the borders / some naughty family's boys are after you / you pinned me to the wall and said my mother stole your inheritance from you — oh yeah?(her friends almost kill her the week sooyoung’s eighteen. it’s the day yerim realizes she knows nothing about her sister at all, and probably never will.turns out they’d made enemies at the bar nearby — jockney’s, wasn’t it? — and some boys had been on the lookout for her. it was a sudden brawl in a little town that had never known violence, and things got bloody because sooyoung almost killed the guy who tried to kill her. the only thing that had stopped her jabbing the broken bottle into his throat had been when their parents arrived.)
Relationships: Kim Yerim | Yeri/Park Sooyoung | Joy
Kudos: 15





	the borders

**Author's Note:**

> if you haven't seen it in the tags big tw for domestic violence :/ i understand if you stop reading where it gets uncomfortable and i understand if you have criticisms. only posted this because i couldn't stop writing for this and i need to learn how to

sooyoung’s a little taller and broader than yerim. 

it isn’t strange to comment anymore when they reach the age of adolescence, with yerim barely reaching eight and sooyoung freshly thirteen. “you both have your mother’s features,” the colleagues in their father’s office always remark. 

when yerim asks her mother, she simply smiles, the tone of it still innocent and warm. “you have your father’s nose. maybe the chin.”

(sooyoung chokes yerim when she’s fifteen and the younger girl ten, in the living room of their own home. her hands are freakishly big, freakishly strong. yerim gets the wind knocked out of her and the thought  _ i shouldn’t have said anything  _ resounding in her skull, and her heart pounding at the fact that- oh god, she’s actually going to die.

“i’m going to fucking kill you,” sooyoung grits.

she doesn’t. she lets go exactly five seconds after that, when a sound mind gets the better of her. the skin around yerim’s neck is sore and she rubs it, wincing.

their parents were out. yerim had asked sooyoung for the fourth time when she was making dinner.)

-

their mother used to hit them. sooyoung first, because she was older.

yerim only remembers watching from the bedroom, peering into the doorway, her four-year-old body trying to lean its weight to balance. sooyoung is nine and mom slaps her onto the floor and the blow is so hard that the sound that emanates is sickening, and yerim makes the vow to herself to never end up like whatever her sister is.

they don’t go out for dinner that day. dad goes out to buy takeout and they eat dinner in silence around the table, and no one mentions the bruise on sooyoung’s arm. (their mother never liked bruising the face. it was hard to explain.)

(no one mentions the two times sooyoung stood by the balcony either, the twilight of the night painting a background across her silhouette, with yerim only knowing how to beg  _ “no one else is going to fix my puzzle with me, please.” _

she doesn’t think anyone will for the rest of their lives.

the plead made sooyoung laugh and walk back into the bedroom. yerim has never seen her try it again. she never tries it herself.)

-

her father hits her when she’s fourteen. gets a ruler and slaps it against her thighs until red welts appear.

(she remembers this feeling. of fresh white paint on the walls of this home before and someone else’s cries resounding off them. yes, she thinks she remembers this feeling.)

_ “for god’s sake, act normal for once!”  _ he screams at her. she shakes her head.

“i’ll pack it tomorrow.”

“if you don’t pack it right now, i swear to damn god-”

her mother joins in, begging him to stop and stepping into the room. “stop it, you’re being angry for no reason! she’s only a child!”

time must have worked non-linear in that house, because she remembers different words spilling from her mother’s mouth at a different age. she takes it anyway — this house is a game of what you can get.

she hears the teevee’s noise outside as her father drops the ruler and starts to mutter insanely everything wrong with this family. yerim decides she doesn’t need to hear it. they tell her enough. she knows well enough. so she walks out the room, leaving the parents to fend for themselves. she doesn’t need to be a part of this.

sooyoung doesn’t spare her a second glance when she comes ‘round to scoop up her homework and put it into her schoolbag. maybe her father will be happy now.

-

she roams around this part of the town until the crowd beckons them over.

“hey, sooyoung,” bae joohyun calls out. yerim whips her head towards her sister’s friends. three in a group, rarely seen separated. 

“that your sister?” 

sooyoung nods curtly. “hanging out tonight?” she asks in return.

“mm-hm. heading out to jockney’s. you coming?”

_ say no,  _ yerim requests, silently in her head. sooyoung’s hand feels safer with hers in it. there’s also a curfew tonight for them. the crowd does not have curfew though, she’s certain. because she’s asked around her class before and none of her friends have a curfew. maybe her family is just better, a little rougher. the crowd looks like a fisherman’s hook, line and sinker — reeling the trouble in.

there’s a moment of contemplation, before the older sister shrugs. “sure,” she says. “i think.”

she remembers sooyoung turning to her, putting both hands on her shoulders. “You can get home by yourself?” she asks, gently. yerim almost shakes her head.

that night, sooyoung returns fifteen minutes late. mom gets mad fifteen minutes before curfew. yerim closes the door and turns the lights out when she hears the noise begin to brew, willing her eyes to shut.

-

sooyoung first hits her mother back when she’s sixteen. she’s taller and broader now and maybe out with too many friends, because all yerim ever sees her come back from is some work out at some bar or some gym. she doesn’t quite know what all that muscle mass is for.

(the first time her parents did it in front of her, she’d been doing math homework. it’s the first time she sees her sister cry — “why did you hit him!” dad shouts. “answer me.”

sooyoung shakes her head so profusely yerim’s afraid it’ll fall off into a puddle of tears, mixed with snot. “i didn’t i didn’t i didn’t,” she denies. “he came onto me first, dad, listen to me-”

“admit it!” he screams. “why did you hit him!”

her mother comes to the rescue again this time, “stop, she’s said she acted in self-defense-”

the slap echoes through the house and sooyoung goes silent again, one in the coming hundred times. “i know she didn’t,” his voice is full of a rage that yerim almost swears never to be; not if it inflicts pain like this, not if it makes sooyoung sob for something she didn’t do. “i let you take taekwondo classes and this is what you do with it? you ungrateful shit, just tell me why the hell you hit him-  _ his mother is calling-” _

“i didn’t hit him,” sooyoung sobs. her father almost throws her to the ground with his maddening grip and he probably would have if mom hadn’t stopped him. “i didn’t hit him.”

_ “then why is his mother calling us!”  _ he yells. sooyoung only continues shaking her head, for this point it’s all she can do.

turns out his mother called to apologize. yerim can’t quite remember what happened after that. their parents were never good at tidying things up. maybe they just sent sooyoung to sleep after. yerim just remembers completing her math homework at the usual time.)

it’s a horrifying sight — their mother has never been the strongest person so she falls back onto the ground with a yelp, and sooyoung’s voice is so loud and so powerful it almost makes her look like dad, and their mother shrieks “she touched me! did you see that! she pushed me!” and sooyoung roars  _ “don’t ever touch me again!” _

their mother screams and moans and wails throughout the house for the entire day, but it must have done the trick because she doesn’t touch her again, at least for the week. and slowly, yerim begins to understand how this house works.

-

“you know how gentle sooyoung is,” her mother said to her once, glumly, maybe when said person was thirteen. “i worry for her.”

yerim tries to keep that in mind when she watches as sooyoung scream back at mom and slam the door on her, her every stance a danger, her every raise-of-voice a threat. she jams it, actually. it prompts them in the coming years to get a new set of doors everywhere.

-

thirteen, and her mother hits her again for the she-doesn’t-quite-know time. but this time, yerim stops crying. she keeps the  _ “stop, please stop,” _ s down and reminds herself that that’s not what will save her. instead she bares her teeth wild and yanks her arms away from her mother’s all-too-tight grip. eyes wide glaring at anybody who comes towards her with a clothes’ hanger again.

but yerim is smaller than sooyoung, and she’s the youngest. so the hits don’t stop. they get worse, and they get more frustrated until one day she looks out the ledge and her father breaks down and screams “what do you want from me!” like the day his wife left him and he ran around the house hysterical with tears down his ugly mouth and sooyoung and yerim laughing like he was the circus he promised to take them to when they were kids.

-

one day, sooyoung takes on their father herself. it tires them out before the afternoon ends, and yerim thinks that’s when he officially gives up on her, because he’s old. sooyoung’s not. she thinks there’s blood on the floor but it’s mopped away the next day anyway.

(yerim tries it too, one day. she has to. she’s fourteen and her father gets into an argument with her again and he throws her small body onto the bed as she screams and kicks him with both her legs, her head frantic with the idea that if he touches her she’ll be dead in a second.

she doesn’t win, of course, but no one ever talks about it. she starting to think she’s the only one who remembers.)

-

sooyoung’s friends invite her out again. and again. and again. yerim knows that’s the point of friends, but she takes one look at the glint in bae joohyun’s eyes and wonders if it’s that worth it.

then one day yerim walks alone without sooyoung on the way back home and she hears a, “hey! park sooyoung’s sister!”

she looks towards her left. there they are again, seated on the stone bench that stretches ‘round the stone table.

“come over,” one of them beckons with their hand. she almost declines the offer until her better judgement wins over. so she saunters a bit, over to them.

“what’s your name?” she hears one of them say when another answers. “i think it was yerin. yerin, right?”

she corrects them. “yerim.”

“oh!” one of them says excitedly. actually, she thinks it’s bae joohyun. the glint in her eyes is nowhere to be found and she offers with a kind smile, “do you wanna play chess? seulgi brought a set.”

they play until the sun sets. joohyun asks about yerim’s classes and she talks about her shared cohort with seungwan and seulgi and sooyoung and they laugh at shenanigans that happened in school the past week and- hey, maybe sooyoung’s friends aren’t so bad. maybe she was wrong.

“you know that- that paper pinned onto the door?” joohyun starts by referring to their shared classroom (the school cohort was separated by the morning and afternoon class, and it was just pure luck yerim’s occupied the same exact class sooyoung’s did), a grin on her face. she’s a bit of a storyteller when it comes to it, yerim’s noticed. especially when it comes to her sister. it seems like she knows quite a bit — too much or not enough, yerim might never know.

seulgi barks out a laugh while saying, “i sat in front of her the whole time and when she told, me i-” the rest of her sentence is drowned out by seungwan actually narrating the story: “so we were in science class and the teacher put out a test for the moon phases, and we needed yellow colored pencils, right? she’d told us the day before. but  _ joohyun _ here-” she throws a chess piece at said girl, who catches it. “didn’t bring any. and sooyoung, well sooyoung was sitting right next to her and, well-”

“she lent me the pencil but the dummy didn’t have any extras,” joohyun continues, her eyebrows furrowed comically, evidently confused. “and then she never asked for it back ‘til the end of class, so i thought she’d gotten one of her own but- she used a brown pencil in the end! god,” she laughs softly. “the teacher came up to her and was so shocked and asked her to explain but- oh, you know how sooyoung is.” she gestures to yerim, expecting her to get it.

“she’s too slow,” seulgi leans back into her seat. “too soft-spoken and too slow. she’d barely said a word when the teacher started having the whole class laugh at it. then they pinned it up. a lesson, mrs. kim said.”

“too gentle,” joohyun murmurs, playing around with chesspiece in her hand. yerim turns towards her suddenly after catching wind of that. her blood pounds in her ears. stares. 

“that doesn’t sound very nice,” yerim says in the end.

she hears seungwan respond for that. “yeah well, she wasn’t fast enough. it’s not the worst that could happen. she got all the phases right anyway, see, she always does, kind of just knew- just the color...”

“you know, i think it’s because sooyoung’s got a soft spot for joohyun,” seulgi teases, cracking up one of the school’s olden jokes. it was a popular one, that the two girls from the two bigger cliques had something a little more than friendship. even yerim took part in the jokes once in a while, laughing along when her friends had asked her about it. they were young then. lovebirds were more of a childish scandal than anything.

“oh, shut up,” joohyun throws the chesspiece back at seulgi, visibly annoyed. but there’s still a ghost of a smile on her lips. “you know it’s not that. that rumour’s old anyway, you all need to give it up.”

they almost leave it at that when joohyun speaks up again, quietly. “you know, she’d lend it to any one of you. it’s just the way she is.”

the circle of friends nod in quiet agreement. yerim doesn’t tell anyone of the anger lying behind joohyun’s words, like the fact was needed to be spoken through gritted teeth.

she gets home a little later than expected and her mom’s a little mad, but her expression softens a little at the mention of what happened today. she glances towards sooyoung. “sooyoung, remember to take care of your sister.”

sooyoung looks away from the programme she’s watching and looks at yerim intently. “got it,” she grunts, swiftly turning back. mom proceeds to make dinner and yerim doesn’t miss the way sooyoung’s smile stays on her lips.

-

at one point, she did think sooyoung was invincible. but then she looks a little further back and remembers again the burden of a family that chooses to forget.

sooyoung’s broken the chandelier because she’s practicing and her kick is a little too high and a little too strong, and a single fake diamond falls the ground and shatters and the first thing her sister does is completely freak out. “they’re going to kill me,” she echoes with the horror on her face. “they’re going to-” and then yerim remembers sooyoung wasn’t quite invincible for once.

(that evening, sooyoung breaks a window with another kick and the glass pierces her foot. maybe a few moments before, maybe a few moments after, yerim remember watching her grip the phone with anxiety and mumble into it, “hey, seulgi? could i live at your place for a while? please? please, i’ve done something my parents are going to kill me for.” remembers watching sooyoung lugging luggage into their shared bedroom and begin shoving as many clothes as she has.)

their mother forgives sooyoung’s paranoid mind, with tender words and a soothing voice. but not before laughing at her ridiculousness of asking her friends for help.

(“please yerim,” sooyoung sobs into her hands that night, body turned towards the younger girl from the chair beside the window. “don’t tell mom. don’t tell mom.”

she won’t stop saying it, even after yerim tells her “i won’t, i won’t.” maybe that’s how sooyoung got her to shut up for the rest of her life.)

when yerim looks back on it, they had too many similarities whether she liked it or not: they’d both taken up taekwondo in the end, they both used it in school fights on the bus, their father smiled the same smile when they mentioned taking up basketball, their mother weeped whenever they turned against her. and as hard as she tried not to end up like sooyoung at the other end of the stick, she did anyway. and she’d prayed so hard. maybe it was learned. maybe it was meant to be like this all along.

-

“just get the hell out of here,” sooyoung advises. “it’s that easy.”

this is a conversation for when yerim’s seventeen and sooyoung’s twenty-two, with studies in the university a few distances away and a kindness in her eyes from never before. it reminds her of when they used to fix puzzles together. this is a conversation against the backdrop of their parents yelling intertwined, spitting out the same old insults. yerim’s been wondering if they’ll ever grow tired of this game.

but strings pull at her heart and her voice is filled with longing as she says, “but what if i don’t want to?”

the other girl’s mouth parts, as if she wasn’t expecting that question. she answers it anyway, much to yerim’s distaste. “trust me,” she reaffirms. “once you’re off, they can’t touch you anymore.”

that night, yerim tries to count in her head who’s been beaten up more on her fingers. but she quickly concludes she’d rather write it on a sheet of paper the next day. sooyoung stays up late because she actually has a paper to write.

-

her friends almost kill her the week sooyoung’s eighteen. it’s the day yerim realizes she knows nothing about her sister at all, and probably never will.

turns out they’d made enemies at the bar nearby — jockney’s, wasn’t it? — and some boys had been on the lookout for her. it was a sudden brawl in a little town that had never known violence, and things got bloody because sooyoung almost killed the guy who tried to kill her. the only thing that had stopped her jabbing the broken bottle into his throat had been when their parents arrived. 

yerim spent the night alone that day. she’d watched a pirate copy of astroboy on the tv and ate the chips and soda sooyoung had ordered from pizza delivery the other day. she never heard the door unlock before she woke up.

**Author's Note:**

> for my brother


End file.
